Bartlett Cleland

The promise of the world of tomorrow is just an empty promise long held out as being made good.

Some municipalities around the country have tried, and failed to set up or operate their own broadband communications networks, to compete in the business of broadband service. The reasons for the failures are numerous, but in all cases taxpayer money was put at risk often without approval of taxpayers and often wasted.

Last week Tom Marino, Judy Chu and Barbara Comstock introduced the CODE Act. The Act would make the U.S. Copyright office an independent part of the legislative branch, instead of remaining part of the Library of Congress.

Not long ago, to be connected online a person had to be anchored to a desk with a personal computer.

The FCC’s proposed privacy rule in no way will lead to the stated goal of protecting consumers. In fact, the logical and obvious result of the proposal is to create a confusing thicket of government privacy rules emanating from both the FCC and FTC which will lead consumer confusion and likely real harm.

On Monday, a Gizmoda report charged that Facebook employees were biasing the “trending” bar by avoiding stories popular among conservatives, and even outright blocking conservative news outlets. Facebook responded in a statement that did not completely reject the report, “There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or on news outlet over another.” In not providing an outright rejection Facebook makes clear what we likely know about this accusation anyway, that something was awry likely because of people.

The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (PITFA), receiving a large bi-partisan approval in the House of Representatives earlier this year, is supposedly going to be taken up in the Senate this week. The provision has been added into the conference report (the final version of a bill to be considered by both chambers of congress) of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015.